View full sizeJason Minick, The Associated Press, 2010 Former Pennsylvania House Democratic Whip Mike Veon walks through the lobby of the Dauphin County District Court in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, for opening statements in a public corruption trial on Feb. 1. For a minute, it felt like a scene out of "American Idol" was going down on the fifth floor of the Dauphin County Courthouse.

Remember when judges Paula Abdul and Simon Cowell would get into some kind of tiff?

Or "Idol" host Ryan Seacrest and Cowell would prolong some snarky sidebar exchange that left the bewildered contestant standing dumbfounded on the stage?

Well, on the day that closing arguments for four Bonusgate defendants stretched late into the day, lawyers for former state Rep. Mike Veon and state Attorney General office prosecutors took turns throwing uppercuts and roundhouses at each other.

Meanwhile, Veon and three former legislative staffers charged with using taxpayer dollars to fund political work were left to watch mutely.

"Mr.[Tom] Corbett should withdraw these charges. We call on the attorney general to withdraw these charges. There’s no evidence to support them," said Veon defense attorney Joel Santone, who also accused the AG’s office of using Veon, Brett Cott, Steve Keefer and Annamarie Perretta-Rosepink as "stepping stones to the governor’s mansion."

Meanwhile, the AG’s office had some choice words for Veon’s Allegheny College friend Dan Raynak, a Phoenix, Ariz., criminal defense attorney who flew to Harrisburg in January to defend Veon.

Well, scratch that. It is clear that Raynak believes his role in Bonusgate extended way beyond defending Veon, the former House whip whose work ethic and obsession with all things legislative and political made him the James Brown of Harrisburg.

Raynak, who has let it all hang out during his six-week barnstorming mission, was hellbent on making sure the AG prosecutors were viewed as bullying, intimidating operators out to find evidence to suit their charges.

"These prosecutors have tried to intimidate me or one of our clients," Raynak said, chest puffed and chin held high in front of the TV cameras Thursday night.

On a night when the defense wrapped up an historic and record-setting trial that delved into the way taxpayer dollars were used to pay bonuses for campaign work, lawyers for both sides were willing to engage in the art of argumentative subterfuge.

While Raynak and Santone sought to call this Bonusgate trial political theater aimed at advancing Corbett to the Governor’s Residence, state prosecutor E. Marc Constanza ridiculed Raynak’s defense tactics as sophomoric.

"He wants to make light of a lot of things. He berated witnesses. He berated prosecutors. But we don’t think it’s funny that $2 million was spent. They want to make it personal so people take their eye off the ball," Constanza said.

Today, the prosecution will deliver its closing arguments to the jury. That should swing the discussion back from the heavy slant presented Thursday by Raynak, who was the final defense attorney to address the jury.

Thursday was a long day.

After a trial that peeked into the blurred and possibly illegal line between political and legislative ambitions in the Pennsylvania General Assembly, we were left with one question:

Why did the defense attorneys for the four Bonusgate defendants seek to repeat painful history by drawing out their closing arguments to the point of brain-numbing misery?

Not that Raynak didn’t deliver a glimmer of hope that the defense lawyers could be kind to testimony-addled jurors.

Raynak seemed to be going for the dramatic kill. He was last up. He came on like the out-of-town lawyer with nothing to lose — an aggressive stance he took throughout the trial. He queued up a PowerPoint presentation and launched a machine-gun-fire litany of rebuttals against the attorney general office’s charges against Veon.

Raynak hammered home the idea that no one disputed that Veon was a hard worker — as if falling asleep on his office couch at 3 a.m. meant that Veon could not have been part of the scheme to pay staffers for campaign work.

The real issue, Raynak, said, was that in giving deals to key witnesses like Mike Manzo, Scott Brubaker and Jeff Foreman, the prosecution was relying on "liars" more concerned about keeping their jail sentences to a minimum than telling the truth.

"Why would you believe people who lied, who gave bonuses to girlfriends, gave themselves bonuses and lied to their friends?" Raynak asked.

It went on until sometime around 5:45 p.m. Raynak compared Manzo, Foreman and Brubaker and other witnesses prepped by the AG’s office to "gypsies, tramps and thieves."

A Cher reference!

And that was Raynak’s real game here. He wanted to stand up for what’s right and what’s true, he said.

"They’re polishing their witnesses so they’re like robots. But when you cross-examine, it’s a different story," he said.

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